Holiday Web Security: Shots Anyone?

It’s that time of year again: holiday decorations line the halls, seasonal drinks take over the Starbucks menu, and everywhere you look, there’s another reminder to get your flu shot. What makes the flu shot such a chore is that for maximum protection you need get vaccinated every single year. The measles vaccine, on the other hand, is a one-stop shot and you’re set for life. This explains why over 91% of American’s are safe from the measles while a large majority are at risk of the flu every year.

The thing about the flu virus is that it’s always evolving. There is no single vaccine that can protect you for life. The vaccine that protects you against this year’s strain will not protect you against next year’s. The producers of the vaccine, GlaxoSmithKline for example, are constantly turning their gears to keep up with the quickly mutating virus. If they let it slide for even a few months, the virus wins.

That’s what it’s like working in web security today. As new security measures are put in place, hackers begin to adapt and discover new tactics and techniques to break down the (fire)walls and cover their tracks. Here at Distil, similar to GSK, we must never rest lest the bad guys win.

As a rapidly growing technology startup, we are constantly on the hunt for top-tier engineering talent. I’ve had friends and family ask why. They assume our product must already be complete seeing as we have Fortune 500 and global companies using our services. So why in fact are we still adding to the roster? It’s because the product is never truly “finished”. There is no silver bullet to stop bots and protect the web in its entirety. To do the job right, you need to be extremely focused, determined, and passionate about studying the trends of technology, recognizing patterns and discovering anomalies amongst mountains of data, and eliminating the threats without collateral damage. Most people (re: our customers) see this as an exhausting, expensive, and everlasting process, but this exact challenge is what we live for. Every day we push our product forward and continue our growth as the global leader in bot detection and mitigation.

But alas, the better we get at it (and we are pretty darn good!), the more clever the bots become. Just like the flu virus, the bots are constantly evolving. For this reason, we continue to add brilliant minds to our dedicated teams of data scientists and engineers that continuously enhance our machine learning algorithms and implement the most advanced bot detection capabilities in the world to stay ahead of the game. We aren’t in the business of getting comfortable, we’re in the business of perpetual progression. Day in, day out, our goal is to be better.

“People look at you strange, saying you changed. Like you work that hard to stay the same.” - Shawn Carter

The most beautiful thing about Distil’s solution is in it’s delivery. Even though we are constantly enhancing our product to keep up with new strains of malicious bots, our customers only need a one-time “vaccination”. With a simple DNS change, they come under our protection and automatically receive the most advanced level of bot protection in the world as we strengthen our security blanket in real time. No recurring shots or manual updates. Don’t believe me? Find out for yourself.

But hey, if yearly shots is more your thing, at least the flu vaccine is making major strides in becoming more user friendly; you can now order them through Uber!

About the Author

Brian Feldman, Solutions Engineer at Distil, graduated from University of Maryland with a degree in Finance after studying international business in Australia and Dubai. As an undergrad, Feldman founded a music management and event production company where he worked with some of the fastest rising stars in hip hop and EDM. Feldman is also the CEO & Founder of Gratii, a mobile marketing and gaming company that has been recognized as one of the hottest startups in the Mid-Atlantic region.

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Distil Networks protects mission-critical websites, mobile apps, and APIs from automated threats without affecting the flow of business-critical traffic. We defend customers against web scraping, account takeover, transaction fraud, denial of service, competitive data mining, unauthorized vulnerability scans, spam, click fraud, and web and mobile API abuse. Only Distil’s unique, more holistic approach provides the vigilant service, superior technology, and industry expertise needed for full visibility and control over human, good bot, and bad bot traffic. As their ally in the war against bots, we provide customers with vigilant and dedicated support so that when they’re under attack, there is a team of experts ready to help. With Distil, there is finally a defense against automated attacks that is as adaptable and vigilant as the threat itself.

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